


Femlock 'Things You Said' Ficlet Collection

by sussexbound (SamanthaLenore)



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F, Femlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 20:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10543688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamanthaLenore/pseuds/sussexbound
Summary: This ficlet collection is based on the'Things You Said' writing prompts. I'm cross-posting here from my tumblr (sussexbound).





	1. Things You Said at 1 am

**Author's Note:**

> Tags/warnings may be added as they become necessary. Please check the chapter notes for chapter specific warnings.

“They’ll kick us out soon, yeah?”

“Doubtful.”

The woman in front of John is small, dishevelled, a vibrating, twitchy ball of pure energy; a brilliant, curious, dark smudge of uniqueness in the midst of the bland, impersonal surroundings of the late night Chinese restaurant they’re sitting in.  She’s deceptively young looking for 35, too—appearing to be something more in the vicinity of her late-twenties.  

She’s unlike anyone John’s ever met—blunt, unpredictable, literal and logical almost to a fault, refreshingly honest.  She’s wholly unexpected.  And, John suddenly realises, she is exactly what she needs.

“Well, it is almost 1:00.”

“Mmm…”  Sherlock cracks open the fortune cookie sitting on the side of her plate, and nibbles daintily at the corner as she unfurls the fortune inside.  She wrinkles her lightly-freckled nose and slides it across the table beside John’s plate, flicking the crumbs from her finger tips, as she does.  “Utter nonsense.”

> ‘ _An unexpected meeting will change your life forever.’_

John grins.  “Sounds promising.”

“Sounds like the same sort of mass-produced drivel one always finds in the fortune cookies in this grade of establishment.”

John laughs.  A sharp bark of a thing that causes Sherlock’s head to snap up in surprise, a riot of hastily bound curls bouncing lightly.  She just stares, and John forces herself to sober.

“Sorry.  That wasn’t meant to be a joke?  I just—I found it funny.  Dunno why.  It’s been awhile since I laughed.”

Sherlock’s pale eyes zip back and forth like frenetic fireflies, taking in every nuance of John’s facial expressions, her body language, every single tell.  After a moment, her cheeks pink a little and her eyes drop.  “I suppose it was a bit.”

John snorts and smiles back.

Sherlock is looking at her again, studying her with the kind of intensity she seems to reserve for crime scenes and dead things.  “For what it’s worth,” she begins, tone earnest, and serious.  “Meeting you has changed my evening, at least—and for the better.”

John is momentarily stunned.

Sherlock smiles, small and almost shy, before giving her head a sudden, tiny twitch, raking a hand through her already wild hair and shooting to her feet.  The spell is broken.  

“Well—you did save my life.  I need the loo.  Leave a tip, will you.  I don’t have cash.  Do you have cash?  The bill is taken care of.  But we should tip.  Get us a cab, too.  Be right back.  Meet you outside.  Won’t be long.”  All in a flat, but somehow still anxious rush.

John nods.  “Yeah…  Okay.”

“Good.”  Sherlock stands there, bouncing from one foot to the other, fingers worrying the slightly long cuff of her coat, before blurting out, “Good.  Bye,” and disappearing toward the back of the restaurant.

John feels the corner of her mouth twitch upwards.  She looks down at the small piece of paper by her plate: ‘ _change your life forever’._ Wouldn’t that be nice.

She tucks the fortune into her wallet, slides it over Harry’s picture, and then snaps the billfold shut again with a clap.  

Wouldn’t that be nice…


	2. Things You Said Through Your Teeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: profanity and mild violence.

“Lie fucking still!”  ground out between clenched teeth, as John presses her knee more firmly against the suspect’s ribcage, twists his arm a little further back.  The man hisses and groans, and then jerks suddenly, trying to throw her.  But he’s a good deal smaller than her and appears to have no training in breaking restraints.  John bears down a little harder.  “Enough!”

The man spits out a string of pejoratives that make Sherlock’s vision go red.  How dare he!  

She steps forward into the damp, neon-lit alley, despite her swimming head, and torn, bloody clothing.  A million sparks of colour blurring her vision with every plink-pat of the slowly intensifying rainfall.  She squares her shoulders and glowers.  “You’re speaking to Captain John Watson, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. Three years in Afghanistan, and a veteran of Kandahar and Helmand, I’ll have you know.  You’d do best to show some respect.  She’s a doctor, too.  She could break every bone in your body while naming them.  In fact, I rather hope she does. after that.”

John looks up, a tiny quirk teasing the corner of her mouth, as she drives her knee deeper into the suspects ribcage.  The faint sound of distant sirens finally floats through the white noise of the rain.

Sherlock looks away, anywhere but at the warm, pleased, adrenaline-heightened gaze of John H. Watson.  She attempts to straighten her ruined clothes.  “Well—you are, John.”  She sniffs and blinks rainwater out of her eyelashes.  

“Too right.  Ta.”

The sirens are getting closer now.  Lestrade and his people will be here any minute, and Sherlock finally feels like she can relax a little.  It had been a close call.  She’d been careless.  Her defence of John had been sincere, but it had also been an olive branch.  Her way of expressing apology, the ‘I’m sorry’ she never seems able to force from brain to lips, the admissions of error and ignorance that feel too much like defeat to say.

John will want to reprimand her later.  She’ll want to tend to her scrapes, and bruises.  She might even make her stay up late, because of the knock to her head.  They might get take-away, and watch one of John’s ridiculous buddy-cop movies, wrap up warm in soft blankets and share a bowl of popcorn.  John might want to share all these things.  Sherlock will let her—gladly.

Sherlock finds she looks more and more forward to these seemingly trite little things.  It’s been three and a half months since John moved into the Baker Street flat, and yet it feels like she’s always been there.  Sherlock doesn’t want to find out what it might be like were John to decide not to be there.  Sherlock has always lived alone.  She prefers it that way, but John—John has changed everything. She’s woven herself into the warp and weft of Sherlock’s life in such a way that she’s become an inextricable part of it.

“You okay?”

Sherlock’s eyes snap up at the sound of John’s voice so close.  The alley is full of flashing red and blue lights, Met officers spilling out of squad cars, their suspect being cuffed and led away by Lestrade.  It’s raining even harder.  Sherlock shivers in spite of herself.  

“Where’s my coat?”

John huffs out a laugh.  “It’s over there by the skip.  A sodding mess by the look of it.  It’s not going to do you any good.  Here, take mine.”  John’s removed her Barbour jacket and draped it over Sherlock’s shoulders before she can object.  It’s still warm from John’s body, and it smells like the cheap, oatmeal-honey body lotion John favours.  It smells like home.  Sherlock feels herself release the tension she hadn’t even realised she’d been holding.  That’s when the trembling starts.

“I want to go home,” she hears herself say.

John’s brow furrows a little.  “Yeah.  Yeah, we can.  Lestrade will probably have loads of paperwork, but the morning’s probably soon enough for that.  Just let me track him down and let him know.”

Sherlock nods.  She can feel tears biting at the corners of her eyes.  Galling.  It’s the adrenaline drop.

John reaches out and lightly squeezes the top of her left arm.  “You sure you’re okay.”

“Fine.  I just want to go home.”

“Yeah, yeah.  I’m on it.”

They’re in a cab, and headed back across the Thames in no time, and John’s hands are everywhere, probing at Sherlock’s bruised scalp and scraped elbows, worrying about the bruises forming on her small, pale knuckles.  “You need to stop doing that.  You need to stop running ahead without me.”

“You need to be faster.”

“Oi!”

Sherlock sniffs.  There is cold water dripping from her drenched curls, to run down her neck, under her collar and down her spine.  She’s miserable.  “Your legs are longer than mine by a foot.  You should be the faster one.”

“Yeah, well I do have the thing with my leg, you know.”

“Psychosomatic.”

John says nothing, and Sherlock instantly knows she’s overstepped her bounds.  She risks a small, side-long glance at the woman beside her.  John is staring out the window at the passing street lamps lining the near empty London streets.

“I’ll try,” Sherlock offers.  “I’ll try to remember.”

Still John says nothing.

“John, I…  Thank you.  Thank you for tonight.  You’re right.  I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t got there when you did.  I underestimated him.”

“You do that a lot, you know—underestimate men.”

“Well they are idiots 90% of the time.”

There’s silence in the cab for the space of 9 seconds, nothing but the quiet thwap of the tires over the seams in the pavement, and then John is laughing, that great guttural thing that always makes Sherlock smile, and want to see if she can elicit it again.

John laughs and laughs, and Sherlock smiles.  This means she’s forgiven, and thank god for that.

When John finally masters herself again, her eyes are fond, and warm, and serious in the soft darkness of the back seat.  “Really, though.  Even the stupidest bloke can be a threat when his back’s up against a wall.  I know from personal experience.  You need to try not to push people so much, to not make so many waves.  Someday I won’t be there on time.  Someday it’s going to get you seriously hurt.”

Sherlock shrugs.  “Why should I care?  Why should I moderate my behaviour just to keep some idiot from going off like a firework?”

“Because I’m the one who has to step in, to put you back together again.  You do get that, right?  You do get that your behaviour effects other people?”

“I’ve never cared much for other people.”

John sits back a little, rubs a hand wearily over her eyes, and then turns to stare back out the window.  “Right.  Yeah.”

And Sherlock’s messed it all up yet again.  “Could we get a take away when we get home?  The Chinese place is still open.”

“Yeah.  Sure.   Whatever you want.”

“My head hurts.”

“Yeah, well you’ve probably got a mild concussion.”

Sherlock slides across the seat until her hip is pressed up against John’s.  “I’m tired.”  She leans her head over to rest on John’s arm and feels John tense a little, squirm, and then relax again with a deep sigh of resignation.

“Don’t fall asleep.  We’re almost home.”

“Could we watch a film?”

“Can’t see why not.”

“Hot Fuzz?”

John chuckles.  “I thought you hated that movie.”

“It’s amusing—in the sort of way that appeals to the lowest common denominator.”

John snorts.  “Yeah, okay.  We can watch it.  Anything else, your majesty?”

“Can I use one of those fizzy things you have for your bath.  I like the orange one.”

“ _I_ like the orange one.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t smell like you.  The little ones smell like you.”

“The cocoa butter ones?”

“Yes.”

John sighs.  “Okay, you can use the orange one.”

“John…?”  Sherlock can feel John tilt her chin down to look at the top of her head.

“Mmm?”

“Thank you.  Really.  I’d be lost without you, sometimes.”

“Good,” all John says in reply.  


End file.
